ladies listened with rapt attention, and drank in every word spoken by their gallant escorts. Instead of a thousand fair and lovely maidens 'hanging entrance on the lips of one orator,' they hung entrance on the lips of a thousand oratorsevery orator had an auditor and every auditor an orator. The speaker was interrupted frequently, not only by the applause from the galleries, but also by the entrance of tardy belles and beaux, the rustling of dresses, the tramp of polite marshals eager to show seats to the blushing late-comers, and lastly by the merry hum of the audience. Under these circumstances, what youthful orator' with soul so dead' who would not feel inspired to soar to the loftiest heights of impassioned eloquence?"

CHAPTER XIII

COMMENCEMENT-ADDRESSES AND BANQUET-SESSION

1872-73.

Commencement of 1873 continued; memorial address on Professor Gessner Harrison, by Rev. John A. Broadus; Joint Celebration-Hon. Thomas F. Bayard; Commencement or Final Day-alumni address by Ex-Governor Thomas Swann; alumni banquet-to which a few of us students were invited to enjoy the good things and speeches; escorted two of the honored guests, Senator Bayard and Ex-Governor Swann, to Professor Venable's home; death and funeral of Mr. Swann, etc.

WEDNESDAY was beautiful, clear and hot, but its diversified entertainments served to veil all personal discomfort. In the morning, II o'ck, we met in the Public Hall to hear a memorial address on our late Professor Gessner Harrison, by Rev. John A. Broadus. Up to that day I knew little of Professor Harrison except through his Latin Grammar-An Exposition of Some of the Laws of the Latin Grammar, Harper Brothers, 1852-a work of which Professor Peters had spoken several times in class with a commendation that led me to purchase and use a copy with decided benefit. I further knew that Professor Smith's wife was a daughter, and had seen around the University another daughter, Miss Harrison, afterwards the wife of Professor Thornton, and a son whom I thought about thirty years of age.

On this occasion the portrait of Professor Harrison, belonging in the library, was suspended over the stage amid evergreens and flowers; the stage was filled with professors and visiting dignitaries, and the main floor with an attentive, intelligent audience. After prayer by our new Chaplain, Rev. Samuel A. Steel, the Hon. B. Johnson Barbour, a short and rather compactly built gentleman of about sixty, then President of the Alumni Society, arose and in a deliberate conversational style said: "The Alumni are to honor themselves in honoring a great and good man-great in the fullness of his knowledge and good in all that constitutes the true Christian

gentleman. At the request of the Alumni, their honored brother has come with full knowledge and filial love to tell the story of his noble life. I take pleasure in introducing Rev. John A. Broadus, of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary."

I had never seen or heard Dr. Broadus before, but later had the good fortune to attend several sermons and lectures, and to meet him socially. On that day he appeared about forty-five years of age, five feet eight inches high, and to weigh one hundred and fifty pounds. He had a fine suit of black hair parted well to the left and worn a trifle long, short chin and side whiskers of similar shade slightly sprinkled with grayno moustache; his forehead was broad and full, but not high, which inclined to give the square upper face; nose shapely, well-proportioned with full apex; mouth and lips of good size, the latter when closed indicating firmness, resolution and positiveness; voice clear, sonorous, of abundant volume and depth, easily filling the remotest part of the Hall. His dress was of the provincial black broad-cloth, coat-skirt closed in front and of moderate length; turned-down collar and small black cravat hand tied. He arose without hestitation and was absolutely at ease in reading his manuscript in a serious style for more than an hour. To me there was something pleasant, yet sad, in his face-even his voice and every slight gesture, for these were few, seemed to carry an element of pathos and seriousness, a deep feeling for the personality under consideration. I recognized from the start that it was no ordinary man speaking or being spoken of, so quietly sat near the front to imbibe the beautifully expressed thoughts. Mr. Bayard, who sat upon the stage in my easy view, pronounced it the finest panegyric to which he had ever listened, and I a youth was made almost to realize that Gessner Harrison had been a part of and inseparable from my own life.

I shall never forget how realistic he portrayed in smooth, rounded sentences the outer and inner life of his great teacher -one of the three first medical graduates of the University (1827), who, in addition to and coexistent with his professional studies, pursued and mastered Latin and Greek to such a phenomenal degree under that great scholar George Longthe University's first professor of Ancient Languages-as to

be considered by him, when recalled to England for the professorship of Greek in the University of London, his only worthy and suitable successor-a preference when conveyed to the Board of Visitors that found a speedy and favorable recognition. Nor can I pass out of memory the vivid description of that great man's kind and gentle nature, gifted intellect, scholarly attainments, generous impulses, self-sacrificing character his life mainly for others, his death for another, his unstinted endeavors for the stimulation of thorough scholarship, his very blood for bettering the University he so loved and cherished during the thirty or more years of active and continued service, in much of which he discharged so satisfactorily the additional and onerous duties of Chairman. Who of those present can fail to recall portions of that masterly effort?

He fell amid the storm of war. Three years earlier and the death of Gessner Harrison would have stirred the whole South but he fell almost as unnoticed as falls a single drop into the stormy sea. To this day it is sometimes asked by intelligent men where the famous professor is, and what he is doing. Already when he died the hearts of men were becoming filled with the love of our great military leaders, that love which afterwards grew into an absorbing passion-inter arma silent litterae. And so it is likely that the young of to-day can scarcely believe, the old cannot without difficulty recall, how widely known, how highly honored and admired, how warmly loved, was the mere civilian, the quiet and unpretending Professor of 1859. It is surely worth while, then, not only out of respect for his honored memory, but for our own sake, and for sweet learning's sake, that we should spend an hour here, so near to his old lecture-room, to his home, and his grave, in reminding ourselves and telling to all whom our voices can reach what a man he was, and what a work he performed . .

There was nothing very striking in the appearance of young Gessner Harrison when he came to the University. He was rather below the middle height, with a low forehead, and a head whose general shape was quite an exception to the rules of Phrenology; his lips were too full for beauty, and the face altogether was homely, with one exception-his dark eyes were sincerely beautiful and expressive. In truth, that eye would express, all unconsciously to him, not only meditation, but

every phase of feeling; and, as the years went on, it seemed to a close observer to hide, in its quiet depths, all he had thought, all he had suffered, all he had become the whole world of his inner life. Those fine eyes, which were, no doubt, a little downcast when he first diffidently met the Professors. with the ruddy cheeks which had pleased the school-girls, and a voice most of whose tones were quite pleasing and some of them exceedingly sweet, made no small amends for his general homeliness. .

Gessner Harrison and his brother would neither visit or study on Sunday, so when, in alphabetic sequence, they received from Mr. Jefferson their invitation to dine with him on a certain Sabbath, they wrote declining the honor, with full explanation of their strict training and a hesitation to displease their father. At this instance of filial piety Mr. Jefferson, in a note to them, expressed much gratification, and insisted that they come on a certain week-day. They went, were received with singular courtesy and spent hours of great enjoyment, being, as the Faculty, in a tribute to Mr. Jefferson's memory the following year, said had often been true of themselvesinstructed and delighted by the rare and versatile powers of that intellect which time had enriched with facts without detracting from its luster, and charmed with those irresistible manners which were dictated by delicacy and benevolence. .

There is something sublime in the spectacle of an unpretending, quiet, but deeply earnest and conscientious man, with the classical education of a great commonwealth or of the whole States, resting upon him, and slowly lifting up himself and his burden towards what they are capable of reaching. It was thus that Gessner Harrison toiled and suffered in this University for thirty-one years. And not in vain. During the latter years of this period, he was accustomed to say that pupils were coming to him from the leading preparatory schools with a better knowledge of Latin and Greek than twenty years or so before was carried away by his graduates. It is marvelous to our older men, when they remember how generally and in how high a degree the standard of education was raised in Virginia and in the South, between 1830 and 1860. Let it never be forgotten that the University of Virginia did this; and there is no invidious comparison in saying